Security and the Right to Security

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Security

Security constitutes a foundational order. It is foundational in the sense that ‘without mechanisms that reliably produce or reproduce guarantees of safety it becomes difficult to live one’s life and to do the things that we associate with it.’ ‘Education requires security; business activity requires security; home life requires security, etc.’ Therefore, ‘a minimum security and minimum assurance of security is required for everyday life.’ (Shearing, C., 2010).

The concept of security is believed to derive from the Latin word securus, which means without care; the related word, securitas means freedom from anxiety or fear. When interrogated, ‘security’ has different meanings depending on context. It can refer to a state of mind, that is, a feeling of being safe or assured. It can also refer to various activities, including ‘the use of physical security measures such as locks, bolts and alarms’, ‘the protection against victimization afforded by the activities of both public policing and private security agencies’, and ‘the activities undertaken by a state in the name of protecting the nation-state and its citizens from “external threats”.’(Newburn, T. & Neyroud, P., 2008) Security is a ‘promiscuous concept’ that can be conceived of in various fields such as ‘social security, health and safety, financial security, policing and community safety, national security, military security, human security, environmental security, international relations and peacekeeping.’ (Zedner, L., 2009) This illustrates as well the fact that the term ‘security’ can be defined differently depending on context.

Security has both an objective and a subjective aspect, each intertwined with the other. The objective aspect refers to the condition of being safe. Zedner elaborates the objective component of security by describing it as ‘a condition of being protected from threats, whether through their neutralization, through avoidance, or through non-exposure to risk.’ The subjective aspect refers to the perception that the objective condition of security in fact exists. This subjective aspect is defined by Zedner as ‘a qualified condition of freedom from anxiety or apprehension because feelings of insecurity have been allayed.’ In addition, security is understood as a pursuit, which means, ‘recognising that it is probably unattainable and at best impermanent.’ While these objective and subjective aspects can be seen in several referents of security, it appears that the individual human being is the most concerned in both aspects since they are intertwined. In fact, reference to the term ‘feeling’ entails that security is to be understood first as a personal experience, as opposed to security-related experience of a ‘building’, an institution or a nation-state, for instance.

Personal Security

Given the various referents of the term “security”, Macfarlane observes that ‘it is not immediately obvious whose security counts. Should we focus on humanity, the state, the group or the individual?’ There seems to be a dilemma in the sense that ‘focusing on the security of the state may damage the security of individuals within it, and emphasising the security of individuals may make it difficult for states to respond optimally to internal and external threats.’ (Neil Macfarlane, S., 2007) It is argued that the notion of human rights is ‘concerned with the individual, with ensuring that the vulnerable among us are noticed and then given the solicitous attention each deserves.’ (Gearty, C., 2006) The emerging idea of human security tends, particularly in the trend led by Canada, to emphasise the security of individuals. Human security ‘seeks to re-orient the pursuit of security by placing individual human beings at the centre of security concerns.’ (Von Tigerstrom, B., 2007) Thus, generally and within the broad concept of human security, security whose referent is the individual human being is termed interchangeably ‘physical security’ or ‘personal security’. According to von Tigerstrom, personal security ‘means security from physical violence of many forms, including torture, war, violent crime, or gender-based violence.’ In this sense Shue refers to personal security in terms of physical security: ‘No one can fully enjoy any right that is supposedly protected by society if someone can credibly threaten him or her with murder, rape, beating, etc., when he or she tries to enjoy the alleged right. Such threats to physical security are among the most serious and-in much of the world-the most widespread hindrances to the enjoyment of any right.’ (Shue, H., 1980)

Right to Security

Before attempting to define the right to security it is imperative to elaborate on what a right is. Gewirth explains a formula of a right in this way: ‘A has a right to X against B by virtue of Y.’ He identifies four elements that constitute the contents of the right. The first one is the subject of the right, that is, the right-holder (A); the second is the object of the right (X); the third is the respondent of the right, i.e. the person who has the correlative duty (B); and the fourth is the justificatory basis or ground of the right (Y). (Gewirth, A., 1984) According to Stoljar, ‘to claim something is not merely to demand it. It is more significant to justify that demand with legitimate or legitimizing grounds as to why the claimant should have it; why it is due to him.’ Therefore, a right is the ‘rational basis for a justified demand.’(Stoljar, S., 1984) Additionally, Stoljar suggests that ‘having a right must presuppose a claim in limine, meaning a claim can be made to activate or establish that right simply because rights are not self-executive but lie embedded in normative relationships.’ Thus, he deduces that ‘rights are performative – dependent, their operative reality being their claimability; a right one could not claim, demand, ask to enjoy or exercise would not merely be “imperfect”. It would be a vacuous attribute.’

Considering security as a state or feeling of being safe and protected (comprising both the objective and subjective aspects); and considering right as a justified claim or entitlement, the right to security could then be simply defined as the entitlement or the justified claim to the state or feeling of being safe and protected. It is important to note, however, that some human rights scholars consider defining the right to security to not be a straightforward endeavour. According to Lazarus, the right to security is ‘inherently ambiguous.’ It is ambiguous in that it ‘encapsulates on the one hand commitment to rights commonly associated with absence from coercion, but on the other hand a commitment to coercion in the name of individual and collective security.’ (Lazarus, L., 2011) It is argued that this ambiguity has been exploited to promote the right to security rhetoric that serves political agendas rather than reinforcing the essence of human rights. Relying on the fact that clarity and consistency are important components of legal concepts, Lazarus advocates for limiting the right to security to ‘the narrowest possible set of claims and correlative duties on the State.’ In this perspective she suggests that the right to security must be a ‘specific right’. It must ‘cover something distinctive which other self-standing fundamental rights do not capture.’ ‘A duty correlative of a specific right to security can only mean the development of structures and institutions capable of responding to and minimising “critical and pervasive threats” to human safety, namely absence from harm in the most core physical sense of harm to a person.’

The right to security is thus defined as ‘a right giving rise to a correlative duty on the state to establish the factual conditions whereby objective risks of present and future threats that give rise to reasonable subjective feelings of apprehension or insecurity are minimised to such a degree that the enjoyment of all other rights is possible.’ It is thus observed that ‘the right to security cannot equate to a right to be secure or feel secure.’(Lazarus, L., 2011) It appears, therefore, that the clear and consistent right to security concerns personal security or physical security. This means that the right to security or right to personal security is a justifiable claim to be free from physical violence which may include violent crime, torture, rape, gender-based violence or war.